


Awakening Old Blood

by Kimi_Ichisaigosuki



Series: Cold Iron and Old Blood [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Blood, Child Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 18:22:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11258394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimi_Ichisaigosuki/pseuds/Kimi_Ichisaigosuki
Summary: The price paid for strength and vengeance.





	Awakening Old Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to "Ritual and Sacrifice"  
> The death of a child is described briefly.
> 
> A quick note: the tone in this is a bit different from “Ritual and Sacrifice,” it’s less surreal and a bit more grounded.

Percival stepped out of the train and looked around, alone in the countryside at the isolated station near his family homestead as the train pulled away. The land resonated oddly around him, like it wanted to welcome him home but wasn’t sure it recognized him.

He took off his gloves, knelt down, and pressed his hands to the earth. He could feel the ley lines responding to him, reaching out to him, then through him, all the way back to the estate in upstate New York. That constant pull beneath his lungs tugged him to his feet, down the path, then off the path through a pasture to a wooded area, and from there to a clearing in the trees where a great standing rock twice Percival’s height reached up to the sky, split down the middle wide enough for a man on horseback to pass through, cleaved as though by a mighty strike. Just visible through the cleft in the stone was an ancient, crumbling stone cottage flickering in and out of sight between the oak branches of the clearing.

He walked up to the stone, slid his hand down one side of the crack that ran through the granite and felt the vestiges of ancient magic that made his blood run hot and cold all at once. An echoing whisper danced around him, a memory of a great sword that howled like a mighty storm and came crashing down on the stone, splitting it asunder, of a great burning light that threatened to twist the unmoving bones of the land.

 _Then there was another strike, this time from a spear that roared like a righteous fire all-consuming as it plunged down, splitting the standing stone into a semblance of Brigid’s cross as the spear of fire anchored the earth against the black ships with sails like thunderclouds trying to pull Ireland out to drown in the sea_ —

He pulled his hand back, rubbing at his tingling fingers to try to chase away the sacred stone’s visceral memory of one of the battles against Balor and the Fomorians. The Graves family line had once been stewards of the land, and though that duty had been passed on to Percival’s mother’s line, deemed better suited due to the more recent influx of the Old Blood than in the Graves line, the land was slow to change and still called to the old stewards when its nightmares became overwhelming.

He breathed out shakily, stepped back from the great standing stone that had been cleaved in fourths in one of the great battles against the Fomorians and their dark master, the stone that had willingly given up half of itself to be the cornerstones of the two Graves estates.

The wind rustled the leaves of the ancient oak trees and tugged at his coat and scarf, the hems fluttering towards the passage through the stone, but Percival turned away.

He wasn’t ready yet.

He spent the night at a local inn, ignored the looks he got when he walked through town. He stood out more than he would have liked, but he wasn’t about to hide. The locals knew about the family that passed back and forth between Ireland and the Tír na nÓg without much care for the normal way of things, and Percival knew that he already looked less human than he had when he left the train, with the way his skin shimmered oddly in the lighting of the lobby. That effect would persist for as long as he was near the family homestead, and he didn’t dare to think what was likely to happen when he returned to New York from this visit. But it was needed, _he_ needed it. He hadn’t been strong enough.

He’d turned away the gifts of his blood once before, when he was a boy who only wanted to be passably normal when he returned to school. Now he was a grown man, stepping out of a terrible experience, and he wanted to be strong enough to prevent anyone else from being hurt the way he had been.

He paid for a room for the night with silver, knowing the innkeeper would accept the coin despite the dark look he shot Percival.

He left when the sun was barely kissing the horizon the next morning, making his way back to the stone. It seemed to glow from within like foxfire in the twilit morning, and the wind tried again to tug him through the cloven stone in the sacred grove.

This time, he stepped through.

The world around him shifted, seemed to become more concrete, more vivid, and his senses responded in kind. Percival had to stop just past the stone and close his eyes as he adjusted to the increased input, finally managing to get his head to stop spinning. He glanced back through the stone, saw not pasture and path into town, but dim air and ancient woods with Will-O-The-Wisps drifting among the roots heaving out of the ground and with shadows that hid behind the trees and squabbled amongst themselves. The sky was slate-grey, and thunder rumbled in the distance like the ancient war drums of battles past.

He felt his shoulders relax and began walking to the house up the hill. It looked more or less as he remembered it, the stone cottage no longer a crumbling ruin but in good condition, a house with two stories, a tile roof stained with moss and lichen, windows large enough that they cost a pretty penny when mortal kings thought they ruled this part of the land, and starsteel wherever metal was needed, aged iron-dark so that any mortal that stumbled through the stone wouldn’t think to steal it.

Not that any mortal who managed to find and pass through the stone was likely to make it far if the land didn’t recognize them.

He walked up to the cottage, pulled the key from his pocket, and unlocked the front door. It swung open on creaking hinges, and that more than anything else told him how overdue his visit was.

Percival made his way inside and started lighting fires and casting Lumos at all the lamps. Before long the house was warm despite the cold grey weather outside, and Percival went to the kitchen and pulled a shrunk-down bag from the pocket of his coat, quickly restoring it to its original size and pulling all sorts of things out. His twice-great-aunt’s favorite toffees, the best cream he could get in New York, apples and persimmons from the orchard behind the New York estate, herbs and carefully wrapped narcissus bulbs still blooming from the garden behind the house where he’d buried some of the sacrificial bread, sourdough bread made from the yeast he had been able to reclaim from the kitchen in his house and coaxed to thrive as it had before his capture, tobacco from the old smoke shop in Dublin, good dark beer from the alehouse just over the hill that had stood for as long as even the Graves family could remember, and so much more. With every gift, some of the age and grime faded from the cottage until Percival was standing in a beautiful kitchen with flickering shadows watching him warily from the corners. He could hear rustling from the hillside of stones beside the cottage, sounding like long dry grass in the wind, and turned to the back door where he knew an old stone dish sat on the stoop outside.

He opened the door, paying no mind to the shadows creeping up behind him, nipping and pawing at the shade cast by his body against the watery daylight pooling just inside the doorway. He picked up the stone vessel, worn smooth from generations of hands performing the same ritual he was about to undertake; simple, but one of the most powerful spells he knew how to cast. The bottom of the dish was carved with three runes in a circle at the center: the rune of _Hagalaz_ , the rune of _Gebo_ , and the rune of _Algiz_.

Loss, Exchange, and Protection: what it meant to be a Graves, both good and bad.

He set the bowl on the butcher block, which would accept libation eagerly if he spilled, and then moved to hang his coat by the door so he could roll his sleeves up. His right cuff went to his upper forearm, and his left cuff went to the point between his bicep and elbow.

Percival went to the drawer with the knives and picked out his mother’s favorite paring knife, wickedly sharp and still showing patterns from the starsteel it had been forged from. There was no cold iron in the family home, not when they never knew what kind of guests they might have.

His left cuff squeezed his arm tight enough above the elbow to make the veins in his arm bulge as he went back to the butcher block. He flexed his left hand, watching the blue ropes under his skin press up against the thin layer of tissue that kept his body contained. He took a deep breath, grounding himself and then staggering back as the ley lines leapt up to meet him. Lines like lightning followed his feet up through the stone floor as he found his balance, then returned to the stone dish sitting on the butcher block. He grounded again, braced for the sudden rush of power this time, and felt a breeze swirl through the kitchen from the open kitchen door. His vision became crystal-clear, almost like there was nothing to impede his sight, not even air. He held his arm out over the bowl and dug the tip of the paring knife through skin and vessel at the inside of his elbow and _pulled_ until blood welled and spilled from his flesh like rich red wine. He carefully set down the paring knife, stained crimson at the tip, and simply let the blood flow into the stone vessel as he squeezed his hand to make it flow faster, the liquid filling in the carved runes before overflowing the deep grooves.

The shadows all clustered around the butcher block, rustling in agitation as Percival kept the blood flowing until the bowl was half full, two thirds full, then took the knife to a vein in his forearm when the wound at the crook of his arm began to clot shut, and finally the blood spilled over the rim of the vessel. As soon as the blood overflowed he felt the change come over him, saw his already-pale skin turn moonstone-translucent and the blue veins take on that ethereal iridescence wherever natural light hit them. His hands didn’t change outright so much as subtly shift, his nails sharper and his fingers longer, all the scars on his hands from a human lifetime of working for justice turning marble-pale. The hair falling into his eyes went from salt-and-pepper black to the darkness of a night without end with comet-threads of starlight shot through. His eyes in the mirrored sheen of the blood were a liquid black like oil, the bottomless jet of his irises swirling slowly with the lazy drift of his thoughts.

The shadows scrabbled frantically as his blood sank into the wood of the block like water into parched soil, and he staunched his wounds with magic.

Percival smiled wryly and picked up the bowl, ignored the way his too-sharp teeth pricked at the insides of his lips, and made his way to the door. “Calm down, you’ll get your share.” The shadows wound around his ankles and tried to trip him so that he would spill the blood. “Stop that, there’s plenty without you stealing from whichever Emissary the family decides to send.” He went out the open back door and set the dish down on the lip of the porch, sitting himself down beside it and letting the shadows leap forward to lap at the blood. He ignored the purrs meant to butter him up and kept on pulling shadows away so they didn’t keep their siblings from getting their own share. One tiny scrap of darkness mewled reproachfully and stared up at him, all three yellow eyes glaring balefully. He was about to scold the young shadow cat for gorging itself when he noticed someone coming down through the stones on the hillside, an arching tunnel of darkness that hadn’t been there before leading into the side of the hill.

It was a little girl, maybe seven or eight, wearing a funeral shroud tied as a dress. He carefully avoided her gaze as she skipped down the hillside between the stones in bare feet, the milky film over her eyes not hindering her in the slightest. She was a beautiful child, her raven-black hair sweeping her shoulders and the Lichtenberg scars from the lighting strikes that had brought her down shimmering against her skin, just as moonstone-pale as his own. One scar arched down her arm from her shoulder and crawled up her cheek, the other spread across her chest like a blooming flower.

She giggled at his observation of the formalities, refusing to meet her eyes, but hopped up the stairs and took the stone vessel from the shadowy cats and brought it to her lips, drinking to the sound of indignant yowling. She finally put the bowl down on the stoop for the family cats to fight over the dregs and clots caught in the runes. Her pale pink lips were stained scarlet, and she turned to Percival. “Hello, Percy.”

He smiled broadly and swept her into a hug. “Hello, Gwen.” He held his older sister tightly as she buried her face in his shoulder. “How blow the storms?”

“They listen to me now that they know lightning doesn’t stop me from bossing them around.” She pulled back and grinned, blood smeared over her mouth and chin. “Have you come back to join us?”

He shook his head, remembering how he had seen his sister walk right out into the raging storm to call it to calmness and save the crops of the farmer who shared their land when he was only four. He remembered the lightning striking once, twice, seeing her smoking and charred body fall as his mother held him back, and then seeing his sister climb back to her feet and scold the storm into submission. “Not yet, no. How are mother and father?”

“Grieving you. I think they had hoped that what happened would bring you properly home. You know the dead can’t bear to leave the living behind.”

He gave her a sad smile. “I’ll join the family in the hills when it’s my time. For now, though, this place between the worlds is a good place to meet in the middle.”

Gwen nodded. “The ley lines told us what happened. We’ve opened the way for you to claim the gifts that are your right, if you want, but you’ll have to go by yourself.” Percy murmured an acknowledgement, already planning what to do. She caught his face. “Please be careful. I remember how much you loved the world of the sun. I don’t think you’re ready to leave it yet.” She leaned up and kissed his forehead, leaving a bloody smudge on his skin to mark her blessing, and through her, he felt the love and protective benediction of their family.

He pulled her into one last hug, making her laugh as the air was forced from her lungs. He smelled earth and rain, heard the creaking of her skeleton from the stone of the land leaching into her bones. The weather witch pulled back and smiled at her little brother. “Fare well, Percival. Do our family proud.” She stepped back, her slender hand slipping through his fingers before she turned and walked back amongst the gravestones, slowly fading back into the darkness of the tunnel in the hill before even that was gone. As she walked away the thundering of the war drums rolled out across the glens and fields, heralding the start of the rain.

Percival stood up and headed inside, leaving the rain to wash the stone bowl clean as the shadow cats all stampeded inside to escape the water. He poured a more conventional dish of cream and left it inside the door for the brownie who kept the house safe, knowing the family felines would turn their noses up at the treat they would have pounced on in life.

He spent that night fighting the shadow cats for space on the bed, but being back on the family homestead was all he needed to sleep deeply, unplagued by nightmares for the first time in weeks. He woke with the dawn, mostly because of the shadowy tail tickling his nose, and unceremoniously swung his legs out of the bed to start preparations for his journey. The cats all protested as the sudden movement sent them merging together in a great ball of shadow that tumbled to the ground, slowly pulling themselves back apart as they followed Percival down the stairs to the kitchen.

He smiled when he saw all the gifts he’d brought gone from the table, and breakfast ready made in their place. He poured out more cream for the brownie in thanks and tucked in, enjoying food that always tasted better than anything he could get in New York if it didn’t come from the family kitchen.

His reflection in the mirror when he went to shave took him by surprise before he remembered the transformation when he’d spilled his blood to greet his family. He shook his head at himself in a silent reprimand for forgetting how inhuman he looked, for forgetting however briefly the reason for his visit.

Before the sun was fully in the sky Percival was dressed in practical shirt, coat, trousers, and sturdy boots. He took one of the walking staffs from beside the door and made sure to keep the key to the front door in his pocket even though he had no intention of locking it. He turned from pulling the door shut and blinked when he saw a narcissus, one of the blooming bulbs he’d brought from New York, bobbing gently in the breeze. He slowly looked further out and saw another beautiful white-and-orange trumpet at the crest of the hill.

He followed the trail of narcissus, far more than he’d brought from America, over the hills and into the woods. Before long his breath was frosting, but the flowers bloomed in spite of the ice riming the leaves on the ground. Then the trail ended, and he heard the chiming of silver bells.

Percival took a breath, relishing the burn of the cold deep in his chest as he stepped into the clearing where the Unseelie Court was in session. The guards stopped him, as he expected, and he held out the hand he’d sliced open weeks ago in his kitchen in New York. “I’m here to claim the right of my blood.”

The guards escorted him to the center of the clearing, and Percival didn’t need prompting to bow deeply. “Queen Mab.”

The woman who stared down at him was beautiful like a glacier, none of the softness of first snowfall and all of the cold at the heart of the ice. “Percival Graves. I thought your family was busy protecting the human wizards.” Her voice sounded like cracking ice, like the distant roar of an avalanche.

He looked at her calmly. “That’s why I’m here. I want to claim my birthright.”

Their eyes met, hers ice blue lid to lid and shot through with the silver of frost, a striking contrast to the swirling darkness of his own irises. He felt her pressing at the boundaries of his mind, and opened his barriers to her.

Her mind plunged into his like a spear of ice and brought him to his knees, and he let the memories of his imprisonment, his anger at the indignities and injustice, his fears and his determination to _right this wrong_ crystallize for her to pick up and examine critically. By the time she withdrew he was shivering, his lips tinted blue and his fingertips stark white even under the inhuman paleness of his skin. He wished he’d brought gloves.

She regarded him for a long moment, and he knew better than to speak.

“…Leave us, all of you.” The sacred grove cleared out in an instant, and she reached out to tilt his chin up. “Your request has a steep cost. Are you sure you want to pay it?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “What is the price? Blood?”

She shook her head. “Your family uses more blood magic than even we do, it seems, and so blood doesn’t have the same significance to you that it does to us. Of course, you need to spill more blood to make up for having less of the Old Blood in your veins.” Percival bristled, and she gave him a wicked smile. “Don’t rail against the truth, Percival Graves. That lack of power is why you couldn’t escape, and why you’re here now.” She sat back in her throne, and the sudden loss of her touch burned his skin like frostbite.

He knelt before her, carefully reassembling his mental defenses. “What is the price?”

The Queen reached out, tapped his forehead with one of her too-long fingers, curving elegantly at the extra joint. “Your anger. It’s invigorating, how vividly you mortals feel emotions.” Her eyes were as cold and hungry as winter, and he felt a trickle of fear run down his spine. “Give me your anger, Percival Graves, and I will give you the power locked away inside your blood.”

He swallowed, uncertain if it was a good idea to give Queen Mab what she wanted. The Unseelie Queen was known for her absolute, violent temper, and adding the human capability to hold a grudge in anger that never cooled could well trigger another years-long cold snap, with vicious winters and unforgiving summer storms. More than that, his anger was his motivation for this entire endeavor. Without it, he wasn’t sure how he would define himself. “…Are you sure you don’t just want my firstborn?”

There was a long moment in which Percival feared that he’d overstepped, and then the Queen’s laughter pealed out like the scream of a winter storm. “Oh, Percival. You and I both know you will never carry on your family line, and I certainly wasn’t going to waste my time trying to tempt you to my bed. Your cousin has had a child, yes? That means you’re free to pursue what your society sees as a terrible perversion.” She cackled as he clenched his jaw, clinging to what little was left of his dignity. “Besides, what would I do with a changeling child with Seelie blood? You’re the most Unseelie child to ever come from the Graves family, and even you were too warm for my Court as a child. Believe me, I would have had you snatched away as a baby if it had been to my advantage. I’m honestly surprised that Titania hasn’t tried to tempt you to her Court, but I suppose she’s still angry at your ancestor. She made quite the mistake, spurning the Summer Queen even after carrying her child.” She watched him with poorly-concealed amusement. “Now, though, you could hold your own against Titania’s efforts to win you over. You’ve been made cold and bitter by that dark wizard who stole your face.” She smiled, and her teeth were too many to fit into her mouth, and far too sharp. “Why don’t you join my Court? Leave the aches and pains of mortality behind, and pursue whatever handsome man you wish.”

That was far too tempting, and if he wasn’t so connected to the ley lines, Percival might have missed the glamorie Queen Mab was weaving into her words. And he had no desire to bring Titania’s wrath down on his family again, even if they were technically related. “Thank you, but no,” he said, and she pouted. “My anger. I will give you my fury at what happened to me.” He met her gaze unflinchingly and hoped to whatever deity was listening that his wording had been careful enough.

Then all his thoughts disappeared as she thrust her hand through his head as though it was nothing more substantial than smoke, straining his memories and their associated emotions through her fingers.

He might have screamed.

He honestly wasn’t sure.

When she finally pulled her hand back, she was clutching a jagged crystal that seemed to warp the air around it like a burning ember. It was absolutely clear, the only indication that it was a solid object the places where the light fractured on the facets. Percival gasped for breath, his eyes watering as he watched the Queen run her finger reverently down one of the edges of the crystal. Her skin split open, and frost bloomed out from the wound. “Beautiful…” She tucked Percival’s anger at what had happened to him, the indignities and violations he had suffered at Grindelwald’s hands, into her belt pouch. And beneath his skin, his simmering anger at the pain and suffering Grindelwald had put his Aurors, his people, through, continued to burn.

She knelt in front of Percival, putting herself on his level. “Now for my end of the deal.”

She grasped his face with both hands, his skin beneath the cut on her finger instantly succumbing to frostbite as she leaned in and kissed him hungrily, devouring as though it was her right. His lips burned from the cold and all the air fled his lungs, leaving him struggling desperately to breathe as his vision turned black at the edges.

Then she let go, and the cold continued to burn through him.

This time he did scream.

He fell to the ground, writhing as ice chased through his veins to his heart, then seemed to explode through him. His vision shifted and warped, seeing the mortal Earth and the Tír na nÓg superimposed over each other. His skin fluctuated between human-warm, changeling-pale, and corpse pallor. His screams were terrible and beautiful, the uncanny ethereal grace of the Fae forcing out any humanity that he didn’t desperately cling to.

When it finally ended, Percival was alone in a frosted clearing, his clothes stiff with ice crystals and narcissus flowers blooming all around him. He slowly pushed himself up, grasped his walking staff, and climbed to his feet. Everything hurt, he could feel frostbite in his fingers and toes, his nose and lips and ears. Beside him, framed by the green stalks of the flowers, was a simple hand mirror with an inscription on the back: _I am the balance paid_. His anger had been more exhilarating than the Unseelie Queen had expected, then. One glance in the silvered surface was all it took to confirm his suspicions: he looked far more Changeling than he had since he was a small child, with moonstone skin and pointed ears and teeth and the darkness of hair and eyes that was characteristic of the Graves line. Any attempts to return to a more human image were futile, and he knew in his gut that his Sidhe appearance was permanent.

He looked up tiredly, and saw his older sister standing at the edge of the clearing. She smiled and waved goodbye before turning and disappearing into the woods. He managed an exhausted wave in return before he turned to head home.

There was work to do.

 

When Percival returns to New York, leashed ferocity follows his every movement. A glamorie shimmers at the edges of his vision and he turns heads, both male and female, wherever he goes, regardless of his attempts to hide his inhuman appearance. He walks into the Woolworth building and the wards flare in alarm at the Sidhe magic burning in his veins and in his eyes, but none of the guards know what to do, because for all that the wards react as though to danger, they still identify him as Percival Graves through and through, with no magical illusion or seeming that a human wizard would be able to sense. So, he passes all the tests, and they let him through.

Wherever he goes the winter wind follows at his heels, and when Grindelwald is caught in France, Percival is there, his lips curling up at the corners further than should be possible, revealing too-sharp teeth as his eyes become a swirling, depthless darkness. “I have come to repay a debt, Mr. Grindelwald.”

He doesn’t kill him. He knows that he does not have claim to that privilege.

But by the time Percival is done, Grindelwald knows better than to ever set foot in New York or Ireland ever again.

He knows better than to ever try to touch Percival or those under his protection.

The Faery Shot buried in the hollow of Grindelwald’s throat burns like fire, like iron against Sidhe skin, whenever he thinks of Percival.

The frost melts from Percival’s hands as the wildness fades from his eyes, the international team of Aurors having long since fled to a safe distance in the face of the savage violence that Percival unleashed as casually as casting a spell.

The Old Blood thrums in his veins, and Percival Graves returns to New York to protect his people.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you thought! Concrit is absolutely welcome!


End file.
